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London, UK, 8th October 2026: B2B marketers risk making decisions based on only a fraction of buyer behaviour, as the latest research from Brands2Life finds that 90% of B2B buyers would not share useful business content publicly online.
The finding points to a growing disconnect, a ‘blind spot’, between the social metrics marketers can measure and the behaviours that actually influence B2B purchasing decisions.
Brands2Life’s B2B Digital, Influencer & Social Forecast highlights that buyers are increasingly difficult to track through conventional digital signals. At the same time, recommendations, trusted expertise and personal networks continue to exert significant influence over purchasing decisions.
The research identifies four shifts reshaping B2B marketing:
1. The most important engagement may be the engagement marketers can’t see – likes, comments and shares tell only part of the story. With 90% of buyers saying they wouldn’t publicly share useful business content online, conventional engagement metrics risk significantly underrepresenting how content travels and influences decisions through private messages, conversations and other forms of “dark social”. Visible engagement should not be confused with total influence.
2. Influence is about credibility, not follower count – the research also challenges assumptions about what makes someone influential. 91% of buyers say the size of an influencer’s following would not make them trust their content more. For B2B brands, the opportunity is therefore less about finding the biggest audience and more about identifying credible voices capable of bringing expertise, depth and relevance to the conversations that matter to buyers.
3. From AI-powered discovery and GEO to changes in social algorithms and platform behaviour, marketers are operating in an increasingly unstable ecosystem. One-third of UK workers believe the digital platforms or channels they use are now more unstable and prone to change than they were a few years ago. The speed of change is also visible in content preferences: short-form content was B2B buyers’ preferred format last year; this year, it has fallen to fifth place.
4. Despite the proliferation of new platforms and tactics, the research finds that the most preferred route for B2B buyers considering a purchase is a recommendation from someone they know. That creates a potentially significant untapped channel for businesses: their own people. Employees’ professional networks, former colleagues, customers and industry relationships can all extend a brand’s influence beyond its corporate social channels.
“B2B marketers have become extraordinarily good at measuring what platforms allow them to see, but that isn’t necessarily the same as measuring what influences a buyer,” says Kinda Jackson, Digital & Social Managing Director at Brands2Life. “Algorithms change, platforms rise and fall, and AI is creating entirely new routes to information. Even buyer preferences can shift remarkably quickly – short-form content has gone from first to fifth in just a year. Building your strategy around whichever tactic is currently winning therefore leaves brands permanently chasing the market.”
“The answer isn’t to ignore new channels or technologies. It’s building a marketing strategy that can survive them changing. That means knowing the audience you need to influence, having a distinctive point of view, using genuinely credible voices and creating content worth passing on – including when that sharing happens somewhere you can’t measure.”
The B2B Digital, Influencer & Social Forecast sets out five areas where Brands2Life believes marketers can build greater and more resilient influence, alongside analysis of changing buyer behaviour across digital, social and influencer marketing.
The full report is available here.
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